Population ethical intuitions

Caviola, Lucius; Althaus, David; Mogensen, Andreas L.; Goodwin, Geoffrey P.

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104941

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…His third argument is based on evidence rather than (il) logical reasoning and is in this respect better than his first two. He cites a recent psychological study that found that our intuitions about the moral value of bringing happy or unhappy people into the world 135 are in fact symmetrical: that is, what we actually think is that it is good to create happy people and bad to create unhappy ones (Caviola et al 2022). This means that the current evidence does not support the existence of the intuition of neutrality.…”

Section: The Intuition Of Neutralitymentioning

confidence: 64%

The Problem with Longtermism

Hyde

2023

eip

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Moral circle expansion has been occurring faster than ever before in the last forty years, with moral agency fully extended to all humans regardless of their ethnicity, and regardless of their geographical location, as well as to animals, plants, ecosystems and even artificial intelligence. This process has made even more headway in recent years with the establishment of moral obligations towards future generations. Responsible for this development is the moral theory – and its associated movement – of longtermism, the bible of which is What We Owe the Future (London: Oneworld, 2022) by William MacAskill, whose book Doing Good Better (London: Guardian Faber, 2015) set the cornerstone of the effective altruist movement of which longtermism forms a part. With its novelty comes great excitement, but longtermism and the arguments on its behalf are not yet well thought out, suffering from various problems and entailing various uncomfortable positions on population axiology and the philosophy of history. This essay advances a number of novel criticisms of longtermism; its aim is to identify further avenues for research required by longtermists, and to establish a standard for the future development of the movement if it is to ever be widely considered as sound. Some of the issues raised here are about the arguments for the moral value of the future; the quantification of that value with the longtermist ethical calculus – or the conjunction of expected value theory with the ‘significance, persistence, contingency’ (SPC) framework; the moral value of making happy people; and our ability to affect the future and the fragility of history. Perhaps the most significant finding of this study is that longtermism currently constitutes a shorterm view on the longterm future, and that a properly longterm view reduces to absurdity.

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Section: The Intuition Of Neutralitymentioning

confidence: 64%

The Problem with Longtermism

Hyde

2023

eip

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“…Complicating the issue, advocates of each framework often disagree about midlevel principles or particular actions. For example, how much should we consider the consequences for currently existing lives vs. future generations, and is it better to maximize total happiness or average happiness (Caviola et al, 2022;Parfit, 2011)? Which particular deontological rules or virtues are morally relevant?…”

Section: How Should We Determine What Is Morally Good Vs Bad?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Prospects and Challenges of Measuring Morality

Sun,

Schwitzgebel

2023

Preprint

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The scientific study of morality requires measurement tools. But can we measure individual differences in something so seemingly subjective, elusive, and difficult to define? This paper will consider the prospects and challenges—both practical and ethical—of measuring how moral a person is. We outline the conceptual requirements for measuring general morality and argue that it would be difficult to operationalize morality in a way that satisfies these requirements. Even if we were able to surmount these conceptual challenges, self-report, informant report, behavioral, and biological measures each have methodological limitations that would substantially undermine their validity or feasibility. These challenges will make it more difficult to develop valid measures of general morality than other psychological traits. But, even if a general measure of morality is not feasible, it does not follow that moral psychological phenomena cannot or should not be measured at all. Instead, there is more promise in developing measures of specific operationalizations of morality (e.g., commonsense morality), specific manifestations of morality (e.g., specific virtues or behaviors), and other aspects of moral functioning that do not necessarily reflect moral goodness (e.g., moral self-perceptions). Still, it is important to be transparent and intellectually humble about what we can and cannot conclude based on various moral assessments—especially given the potential for misuse or misinterpretation of value-laden, contestable, and imperfect measures. Finally, we outline recommendations and future directions for psychological and philosophical inquiry into the development and use of morality measures.

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“…For example, Schoenegger and Grodeck (forthcoming) outlined how lay people respond when their ethical intuitions about populations conflict with their endorsed moral principles. Furthermore, Spears (2017) investigated population ethical views regarding policy choices, while Caviola et al (2022) offered a more general picture of intuitions about population ethics, ranging from the value of average welfare to the focus on currently existing lives.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moore and Fresco (2012) reviewed the literature on depressive realism, i.e., the view that those who are higher in depressive attitudes perceive some aspects of reality more clearly and find that while both depressed and nondepressed individuals exhibit positivity bias, depressed individuals exhibited it to a significantly lower extent; the relationship between antinatalist views and depression has also been established before (Schönegger, 2021). Second, as Caviola et al (2022) pointed out, reasoning regarding population ethics (and by extension antinatalism) may also be influenced by negativity bias (Rozin & Royzman, 2001), the bias that negative events are judged as outweighing positive events of same magnitude. Negativity bias has also been researched in the context of moral behavior (Riskey & Birnbaum, 1974) and on moral judgments (Tappin & Capraro, 2018).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction and Validation of the Short Antinatalism Scale (S-ANS)

Schönegger

Maier

Bastos

2023

Psychological Test Adaptation and Development

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Antinatalism is the view that procreation is morally wrong. This paper introduces and validates the Short Antinatalism Scale (S-ANS) that allows researchers to measure antinatalist views. We conducted four preregistered studies with a total of 1,088 participants. First, we ran a study on Prolific ( N = 296) and conducted an exploratory factor analysis of an initial scale including 22 items drawn from the philosophical literature on antinatalism. In Study 2, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis of a reduced 12-item scale, also on Prolific ( N = 396). Based on a Mokken scale analysis, we further reduced the scale to a 5-item version which we tested in a second confirmatory factor analysis, Study 3, on Prolific ( N = 297), where we also aimed to provide evidence of validity. The results indicated excellent model fit (RMSEA = 0.012) and evidence for validity (with life satisfaction, affective empathy, and conservatism correlating negatively with antinatalism). Lastly, we conducted Study 4 with a sample of self-identified antinatalists on Reddit ( N = 99) to provide additional evidence of validity. We find that the instrument is measurement invariant between self-described antinatalists and the general population and that antinatalists score significantly higher on the scale ( d = 2.80). This provides evidence in favor of reliability and validity with respect to the final 5-item Short Antinatalism Scale (S-ANS). We hope that the S-ANS, which is freely available to all researchers, advances rigorous research into antinatalism and its determinants across a variety of fields that relate to the value of life and procreation.

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Population ethical intuitions

Cited by 6 publications

References 44 publications

The Problem with Longtermism

The Problem with Longtermism

The Prospects and Challenges of Measuring Morality

Introduction and Validation of the Short Antinatalism Scale (S-ANS)

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